UC Irvine Professor of Film and Media Studies Catherine L. Benamou has been selected to receive a 2026 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship in support of her book project, Latinx Media and the Pursuit of Social Justice: A Transmedial Approach.
The fellowship, one of the longest-standing initiatives supporting outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, will fund a six-month research leave beginning January 1, 2027. Benamou was selected from a highly competitive national pool of applicants.
Benamou’s book explores how locally produced Spanish-language and bilingual media outlets are responding to the needs of Latinx communities. Her research spans film, television, radio and print. Drawing on three years of field research largely in the Los Angeles area, including surveys, interviews and working with local media outlets, the project explores how social justice lives as much in the process of making media as in its content. In other words, how media gets made – and who gets to participate – matters just as much as what it covers.
“During this particularly urgent time, I hope to reveal the increasingly vital ways that community organizations on the ground are relied upon by media outlets for information and how commercial outlets are becoming more ‘entangled’ with community-based media,” Benamou explains. “Local media, including Spanish-language commercial outlets, can help viewers and listeners achieve a sense of belonging, as well as provide access to local resources that can help the audience through troubling times.”
The fellowship comes at a moment of intensifying pressure on Latinx communities across Southern California, from ICE raids and deportations to rising homelessness and shrinking access to essential services. For many Latinxs in the LA area, the physical public sphere has become more fractured and restrictive, making local media an essential space for community networking and staying informed. As the second largest media market in the U.S. and a majority-Latinx county, Los Angeles offers a window into how local media responds to community needs. For Benamou, community-based media outlets like low power radio or neighborhood-based newsrooms are irreplaceable, as they reflect the diversity of Latinx communities in ways broader outlets miss.
“My focus on local organizations and media has shown that the indigenous origin of Latinxs in the United States is growing, and the language of media to reach them with timely and pertinent information needs to adjust,” she says. “To effectively respond and record the challenges Latinx communities are facing right now requires access to local rather than regional or national media.”
Benamou has taught at UCI since 2008 and is the author of multiple publications on Latin American film and Latinx media, including Transnational Television and Latinx Diasporic Audiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), which laid the groundwork for her current project in generating research questions and shaping field research methodologies. During the fellowship period, she will dedicate her time to drafting the book’s remaining chapters and completing her field research in the Los Angeles area.
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